It's been a busy few days for Sean Hannity in the blogosphere since New Black Panther leader Malik Shabazz came on his show and brought up a previous chummy association with a far-right neo-nazi type called Hal Turner. Shabazz was trying to point out Hannity's hypocrisy in judging Barack Obama by the comments of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, saying "Are you to be judged by your promotion and association with Hal Turner?" Hannity blustered and denied, and Turner subsequently went online and posted his own version of the friendship which sounded very chummy indeed, and wherein he called Hannity "a Hal Turner sort of guy." Now there's a back-handed compliment. Jason Linkins has the backstory, but I mention that by way of framing this next, separate and distinct example of Hannity's hypocrisy, smartly noted by Andrew Sullivan, regarding Hannity's double-standard when judging Wright and the now-departed Jerry Falwell by their rhetoric, or when allowing that rhetoric to be mitigated by good works. It's worth excerpting in full:
In discussion last week with Obama supporter Rev. Bill Lawson, March 19, 2008:
HANNITY: Reverend Lawson, with all that we've heard from Reverend Wright, do you support everything he has said?
LAWSON: Of course not. I don't support everything anybody says, even members of my own family. But I do recognize him as a friend, as a prophetic preacher and as a person who has been extremely valuable, not only in Chicago but nationwide, almost globally. He is a good man.
HANNITY: He is a good man that says G.D. America, the U.S. KKK of America, all of these statements. Do you think that's coming from a good man?
In discussion with Christopher Hitchens following Falwell's death, May 16, 2007:
HITCHENS: I think we have been rid of an extremely dangerous demagogue who lived by hatred of others, and prejudice, and who committed treason by saying that the United States deserved the attack upon it and its civil society of September of 2001 by other religious nut cases like himself.
HANNITY: He profoundly and repeatedly apologized. And I'm sure you're perfect.
HITCHENS: No, he did not enough.
HANNITY: I'm sure you're perfect in your life and that you've never made any mistakes.
HITCHENS: I've never committed treason like that. I don't believe in the sincerity of his apology...
HANNITY: I knew Reverend Falwell, Christopher. I know the good work that this man has done.
HITCHENS: Tell me about it.
HANNITY: Well...
HITCHENS: Takes a lot to make me cry.
HANNITY: I know you think you're the smartest guy in the room, but you sound like a jackass when you attack his family like this. But I know...
HITCHENS: I didn't attack his family. Excuse me.
HANNITY: ... what he did for unwed mothers. I know what he did for alcoholics. I know what he did for drug addicts.
HITCHENS: Excuse me, sir.
HANNITY: Yes.
HITCHENS: I did not attack his family. And no fair-minded viewer of yours will say it. I'm not going to be conscripted to say that it's my job, when you invite me on to discuss this man, first to say how sorry I am for him and his family. That isn't what I feel. You no doubt, as a Christian or whatever you are, require hypocrisy of people. And so you're asking me...
HANNITY: I'm not asking -- no, but I am asking for human decency. And if you don't think it has an impact on his family to use even the phrases tonight that he's vulgar, a fraud and a crook. And then to say that...
HITCHENS: Am I supposed to conceal my -- you asked me on.
HANNITY: I think you are incredibly mean, incredibly selfish and thoughtless.
HITCHENS: You invited me, sir, to give my opinion of the departed. I give it to you, and you say, well, might that not upset his family. I said it while he was alive. That might have upset his family, too.
That's more than Sullivan included but oh is Hitchens good. The juxtaposition of these two excerpts are just such a stark example of Hannity's hypocrisy. The two exchanges do raise the larger question: At what point do good works stop excusing bad words? How bad do the words have to be to be unforgivable, and does that standard change when applied to the pastor of a presidential candidate? How about when applied to a pastor that said candidate appoints to his official African American Religious Leadership Committee? These are the tougher questions requiring more thoughtful, nuanced answers, and maybe a bit of the human decency Hannity refers to. Judging from the above, though, you are unlikely to find that on Hannity's show.
I just sent this to Peggy Noonan's email box on her website in response to her Feb. 29 article in the Wall Street Journal on William Buckley. Peggy Noonan was Bush Sr.'s speechwriter.
On February 28, right after William Buckley died, NPR re-aired an interview he had given to Terry Gross in 1989. She quoted from a piece he had written in 1965 in which he argued that the proposed Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a bad idea because it would allow a less literate people to vote, and he thought that was unwise. As he saw it --
The central question that emerges is whether the white South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail politically and culturally in areas where it does not predominate numerically. The sobering answer is [base "]yes[per thou] the white community is so entitled, because for the time being it is the advanced race. The question as far as the white community is concerned is whether the claims of civilization supercede those of universal suffrage. National Review believes that the South[base ']s premises are correct.
Did any slaveowner - did Jefferson Davis himself - ever put the racist case more unabashedly? So long as Jim Crow remained in place white legislators would never feel a need to spend any substantial portion of their states' budgets on black communities or black education. Why would they? They were not accountable to black voters. Black literacy levels were lower than whites' in the South in 1965, and Mr. Crow had lot to do with that. Buckley favored retaining that august system for the very reason that it had been so successful. He would leave an entire race voteless, indefinitely, rather than risk a fall-off in voter literacy levels.
What kind of values are these? I asked myself this when I read your recent piece on Buckley in the Wall Street Journal where you said "Conservatism will endure if it is rooted in truth, and in the truths of life. It is."
What conservatism is rooted in is an abiding, paralyzing fear of change that prompts all who follow it to conclude in every case that the wisest course is to oppose any and all societal change regardless of circumstance. The [base "]ideals[per thou] and slogans that conservatives pull out of their pockets like worry beads to oppose change - states rights, free markets, self-reliance, fiscal responsibility, distrust of government, [base "]it[base ']ll lead to socialized medicine[per thou], etc. - serve mainly to mask, particularly from themselves, their true motivation, which is an elemental fear of things unfamiliar. Conservatism would be rooted in "the truths of life" if life and times were immutable so that reform was never needed. They aren't.
My 19th Century English Lit professor at FSU related in one of his lectures the mind set of the English conservative as described by one of the wags of the day: "Don't change anything! It might be what makes England great!" That[base ']s it, isn[base ']t it? Conservatives don[base ']t have any faith in their ability to know good change from bad. They know they have no clue as to what makes society work, so to be safe they just assume that everything that now exists somehow plays a role, and who[base ']s to say it isn[base ']t an indispensable one? It[base ']s fear of all the monsters their imagination paints into that undiscovered country, the future.
What they don[base ']t understand - they are terrible historians [^] is that what has distinguished Americans is not their resistance to change but their capacity to accept it and adapt. As a frontier people we had no choice, and we were a frontier people for a very long time.
The right[base ']s other holy men, Goldwater and Reagan, also opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, The Civil Rights Act of 1964, and in Goldwater[base ']s case Medicare, and if either of them ever recanted their positions I[base ']m not aware of it. Buckley did say in the interview, as he had before, that he[base ']s glad conservatives lost the legislative battle for civil rights. But when it mattered he maundered, foundered and talked liked a fool. He talked like a conservative.
Many conservatives have joined Buckley in recanting their position on the Johnson civil rights acts. Most of them are now glad that conservatives lost the battle over the Social Security Act, as George Bush recently discovered. Most are now glad that they lost the battle over the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act, the FDA, the National Labor Relations Act, and so much other progressive legislation now that time has shown that their earlier fears were unjustified. But that[base ']s what it always takes - time to calm those unrelenting, debilitating fears.
Conservatives are not always wrong, obviously. In a well governed nation there will always be more that is worth conserving than changing. There are periods when change isn[base ']t necessary or even advisable. Many of the things conservatives help to beat back should be beaten back. But the day does come when social change really is needed, and on that day conservatives can be relied upon to not see it, to raise trivial or pretextual objections, and to react selfishly to preserve their own privileges and immunities, just as Buckley did.
The woman stammered. She obviously knew she was still on the air and had to maintain her composure. But it was clear to anyone's ear that she was having a difficult time. Her voice clouded with emotion as she struggled to tell the talk show host and his audience of her story, as a mom whose son was in Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. She hadn't heard from him in weeks. She had just written him an email -- "Son, I haven't heard from you in a long time. Are you okay?" And amazingly, she was able to get through that recounting without crying.
I had a harder time. And hey, I have no horse in this race. I AM a mom, however, so in one respect, I have thousands of horses and other beloveds in it. Four thousand of them returning to me in long neatly-wrapped, patriotically-covered boxes (because, as we all know but still aren't allowed to see) the wrapping paper on these boxes is always an American flag. We do know that the wrapping paper eventually gets folded up in the finest military precision and handed to the grieving survivor -- usually a widow or a mother -- as a consolation prize. A party favor to take away from the big event. A lovely parting gift. I'm sure the frantic mom on the radio was terrified at the prospect of being one of those graveside mourners. Wowee -- she'd have a front-row seat, too. My heart could only sob for her in her nightmarish uncertainty.
But you won't see much of this examined in the media, even while talking heads are talking about it on the Iraq War anniversary. The war coverage, and its true cost, have been thoughtfully sanitized for your protection. And it's still going on that way, even while public opposition to the war has grown substantially. I can remember seeing exactly ONE such funeral. It was early-on. Maybe somebody at the TV station or the parent network hadn't gotten the memo yet.
The woman there was photographed from the side -- in a medium shot. Although we were never offered a scene-setting wide shot, we could assume she was seated at a graveside service. Front row center. A serviceman in crisply perfect dress uniform with decorated chest and spotless white gloves bent down and handed her a folded flag. The camera closed in for a tight shot as she accepted it tenderly and then slowly collapsed over it. Even though she'd bent all the way forward at the waist to cradle it in her lap, you could still see her face in profile. It was swolen and red, the nose enlarged, the eyes bulging with overflowing tears. You could tell from the way her upper body heaved that she was fighting for air between sobs. Her son Branden Oberleitner was being laid to rest before her eyes, just a few feet away. He was 20, from Worthington, Ohio, a PFC with Company B, 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division. He'd been killed in grenade fire in Fallujah, June 5th, 2003. As his mother ached and we watched her heart break on camera on the evening news, the general sentiment about the war throughout the country was still in resounding support. A relative few of us grieved that day with Branden's mother, sharing her anguish, thinking about the sacrifice that never should have been. Five years later, he's on page 5.
We're weary as a nation now. It's been five full years of this stupid, wasteful, ill-conceived, poorly-managed, deception-clad war, and we can count almost four-thousand Branden Oberleitners. At least, we think so. We're still never allowed to see that part of it. The best we get are newsreels of John McCain on a sunny tour of Iraq, confusing which enemy segment is where, and unable to revisit that nice open-air market this time (too dangerous, he was told). There's scarcely even any coverage of the continuing death toll in the media anymore. That doesn't mean it doesn't still happen. Some of us are hoping the escalation, the so-called surge, in Iraq is working to validate their longterm faith-based beliefs that things are better over there now because of what we did. Besides, our president says it's even sort of romantic -- fighting over there. He also once said that the moment the Iraqi people wanted us to leave, that's what we'd do. At this war anniversary, majorities of Iraqis tell pollsters that is what they want. General William Odom says funding for the occupation should be stopped (and Bush and Cheney impeached). And a former Iraqi government figure told a British newspaper earlier this week that live overall was better under Saddam Hussein.
Yesterday we marked the four-thousandth American casualty from this war we were lied into waging. Ask Dick Cheney about the consistently large numbers of us who want America out of there and now believe the war wasn't worth it, and his generous, considerate response is "so?" Who cares, I guess, how many more Branden Oberleitners there will be? I never knew Branden Oberleitner, but I feel almost as though I did. Even if Cheney doesn't care so much, I mourn Branden's loss as a mom, and pray for continued comfort for his mother. And I resolve not to stay silent about the war or my adamant, ongoing opposition to it.
If you REALLY care about our troops, whether you want them out of that dead-end hell hole over there or not, then support them. As we limp into Year Six, listen to their families. Listen to those mothers' voices on the air - who want nothing more than to hear from their precious son or daughter - missing and/or incommunicado on the front lines. That's the only clear picture anyone among the rest of us will get, to illuminate even a small part of their sacrifice. And honor those who do want this ended, and all our loved ones back in our arms here at home.
Wrapping up a nine-day overseas trip to Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney was asked, in an exclusive interview with ABC News, about the effect on the nation of today's grim milestone of at least 4,000 U.S. deaths over the five-year Iraq war.
Noting the burden placed on military families, the Vice President said the biggest burden is carried by President Bush, and reminded ABC news that the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan volunteered for duty.
Meet the man who inspired Reverend Jeremiah Wright's now famous tirade about America's foreign policy inciting the terrorist attacks of September 11.
His name is Ambassador Edward Peck. And he is a retired, white, career U.S. diplomat who served 32-years in the U.S. Foreign Service and was chief of the U.S. mission to Iraq under Jimmy Carter -- hardly the black-rage image with which Wright has been stigmatized.
In fact, when Wright took the pulpit to give his post-9/11 address -- which has since become boiled down to a five second sound bite about "America's chickens coming home to roost" -- he prefaced his remarks as a "faith footnote," an indication that he was deviating from his sermon.
"I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday," Wright declared. "He was on Fox News. This is a white man and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end. He pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Muhammad was in fact true: America's chickens are coming home to roost."
Wright then went on to list more than a few U.S. foreign policy endeavors that, by the tone of his voice and manner of his expression, he viewed as more or less deplorable. This included, as has been demonstrated in the endless loop of clips from his sermon, bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nuking "far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye."
And then he concluded by putting the comments on Peck's shoulders: "A white ambassador said that yall, not a black militant, not a reverend who preaches about racism, an ambassador whose eyes are wide open and is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice... the ambassador said that the people we have wounded don't have the military capability we have, but they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them... let me stop my faith footnote right there."
Watch the video (the relevant material starts around the 3:00 mark):
So it seems that while Wright did believe American held some responsibility for 9/11, his views, which have been described as radically outside the political mainstream, were actually influenced by a career foreign policy official.
Who is Peck? The ambassador, who has <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2006/07/27/video-former-ambassador-ed-peck-defends-hezbollah/";>offered controversial criticism of Israeli policy in the West Bank but also warned against the Iraq War, was lecturing on a cruise ship and was unavailable for comment. But officials at Peck's former organization, the Council for the National Interest, a non-profit group that advocates reducing Israel's influence on U.S. Middle East policy, offered descriptions of the man.
"Peck is very outspoken," said Eugene Bird, who now heads CNI. "He is also very good at making phrases that have a resonance with the American people. When he came off of that Fox News, a few days later he said they would never invite me back again."
And what, exactly, did Peck say in that Fox News interview that inspired Wright's words?
Here are some quotes from an appearance the Ambassador <a href="http://thinkonthesethings.wordpress.com/2008/03/20/video-jeremiah-wright-chickens-coming-home-to-roost-september-11-full-sermon/#more-2653";>made on the network on October 11, 2001, which may or may not have been the segment Wright was referring to. On the show, Peck said he thought it was illogical to tie Saddam Hussein to the terrorist attacks on 9/11, and that while the then-Iraqi leader had "some very sound and logical reasons not to like [the United States]," he and Osama bin Laden had no other ties.
From there, Peck went on to ascribe motives for what prompted the 9/11 attacks. "Stopping the economic embargo and bombings of Iraq," he said, "things to which Osama bin Laden has alluded as the kinds of things he doesn't like. He doesn't think it's appropriate for the United States to be doing, from his perspective, all the terrible things that he sees us as having been doing, the same way Saddam Hussein feels. So from that perspective, they have a commonality of interests. But they also have a deeply divergent view of the role of Islam in government, which would be a problem."
<a href="http://www.newshounds.us/2008/03/23/neo_naziwhite_supremacist_hal_turner_confirms_friendship_and_kinship_with_sean_hannity.php";>The folks over at NewsHounds have been watching their Fox News Channel quarry dither over Senator Barack Obama's associations with pastor Jeremiah Wright, and noted Fox's own Sean Hannity getting himself tripped up in the guilt-by-association tango. Seems that one of Hannity's former close chums is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Turner";>a neo-Nazi named Hal Turner who used to be a radio host, is apparently the top man in Bergen, NJ white-supremacist circles, and probably spends a lot of his time in his basement with Star Wars action figures acting out Holocaust-denier versions of The Return of the Jedi. In short, just the sort of person with whom you'd imagine Sean Hannity spends a lot of formational time with.
Hannity added, "What I don't think you're understanding here, Malik, is that when you hear the minister of him for 20 years, when you hear the associations with Louis Farrakhan, one of the biggest racists and anti-Semites in the country, what you're not understanding is, America hears extremism at its worst."
Shabazz responded, "Let me ask you this. Are you to be judged by your promotion and association with Hal Turner?"
Hannity waved his arm around. "I don't know anybody named - this is nonsense. I don't..." Then Hannity changed his tune. "Sir, sir... That was a man that was banned from my radio show ten years ago, that ran a Senate campaign in New Jersey."
Then, as Shabazz refused to stop talking or back down, Hannity, in a tacit admission, said, "I'm not running for president."
"A neo Nazi, you backed his career," Shabazz said.
Hannity answered, "That is an absolute, positive, lie and you've been reading the wrong websites..., my friend. Good try."
Well, there's plenty of evidence to the contrary (<a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050620/blumenthal";>Max Blumenthal's piece in Nation is good for a start), but it hardly matters, because don't you know, days later, Turner himself was doing his pal a total solid by coming out and stating, "Oh, yeah! We're best of buds!"
I was quite disappointed when Sean Hannity at first tried to say he didn't know me and then went on to say that I ran some senate campaign in New Jersey. In fact, Sean Hannity does know me and we were quite friendly a number of years ago.
When Hannity took over Bob Grant's spot on 77 WABC in New York City, I was a well-known, regular and welcome caller to his show. Through those calls, Sean and I got to know each other a bit and at some point, I can't remember exactly when, Sean gave me the secret "Guest call-in number" at WABC so that my calls could always get on the air.
I mean, Hannity gave Turner his Super Secret Little Anti-Semite Annie Decoder Ring so he could call him up whenever he wanted to! If the two men had been younger - and mentally eligible for a high school education - they surely would have gone to prom together!
Anyway, Turner and Hannity have a nice, long, intimate, chummy history, and <a href="http://halturnershow.com/";>Turner offers the essential blow-by-blow. "I can tell you from my firsthand, personal experience that Sean Hannity does, in fact, agree with many of my political and social views. I can also tell you that Sean Hannity disagrees with some of my political and social views. I won't go subject-by-subject to say which he agrees with and which he disagrees with. You can figure that out easy enough on your own!" Can we? What if we're not enthusiastic fans of the thought processes of nimrods, though?
Naturally, Turner has got a blustery warning for us all: "Another big difference is that I am perfectly willing to use force and violence against my enemies while Sean Hannity and others are not. Those using me as a prop to attack Sean Hannity would do well to remember this fact. Rest assured I will remember them when the opportunity presents itself; especially as it pertains to that douche bag sodomite Max Blumenthal for the falsehoods and total trash he wrote about me in 'The Nation' magazine."
Update: Newhounds has updated its Hannity/Turner post, pointing out a comment signed by Phil Boyce, Program Director of WABC, Hannity's radio station, disputing many of the facts, especially the dates, in Turner's account (Boyce's comment has been posted here as well. See first comment below). Newshounds responded to Boyce's criticisms, saying: "the real issue is what was Turner allowed to say on the air, how often and what was Hannity's reaction? We have an article in a national magazine plus one of the parties involved who say that Hannity was a welcoming, friendly and encouraging host for Turner's views for a good while. Neither Boyce nor Hannity has specifically denied that."
Families Torn by Citizenship for Fallen. The Associated Press reports, "as the war continues, more and more immigrants are becoming citizens in death - and more and more families are grappling with deeply conflicting feelings about exactly what the honor means." [t r u t h o u t]
10:54:21 AM comment []
Vermont Argues Iraq War Is "Mission Expired". Terry J. Allen, of In These Times, reports, "While Congress runs out the clock on President Bush's Iraq War, some Vermont legislators hope to spark a state-by-state movement to quickly withdraw National Guard troops and stanch the flow of blood and treasure." [t r u t h o u t]
10:25:41 AM comment []
